Used them for the first, and last, time yesterday. It was a bear trying to pour out the wort and not get some of the trub in there. I used a grain bag, which helped a little; but, there was still a lot that found it's way out. Oh well, only whole hops for me!

There is tradeoffs between pellets and leaf hops. I am still working on methods to filter better, and there are several suggestions on this forum I haven't gotten around to trying yet. I've got a boil kettle with a ball valve welded on, but it stops at the pot wall so there is no internal pickup tube to place a filter on.

The big downside with pellets is they are harder to filter. The upsides though are pretty good. If you buy in bulk they use way less room to store, and store over time better. I usually put a pound in a couple vacuumed mason jars. Also you get a little bit better utilization from them as well, so you don't have to use quite as much.

There are certainly benefits to pellets. For me though, I prefer not to use them. I have a boilermaker with a hop screen and can only use leaf hops with it. I'll use pellets for some european styles, but will not use them for american styles, especially hoppy ones. I get a grassy flavor, that I don't like. And it's not just my hops, I taste it in some commercial beers as well. But, everyone has their preference. Plus, I thinkk my parents/friends are starting to get annoyed that I've "borrowed" some of their ffreezer space since mine is filed to the max (not even room for food).

I've only used pellets but I've only brewed 6 batches so far. I tried a hop bag for the first time on the last batch and it worked great. I also had someone suggest the paint bag filter you can get from Home Depot - plus you can configure a simple setup to have it suspended above your kettle (I haven't done this yet). The batch I used the bag on came out really great too. Finally, a few people told me not to try to filter the spent pellets and just put them into the primary.

I use both whole and pellets but prefer pellets. I siphon after whirlpool or just dump the whole thing in the fermenter (never have used a bag.) Whole soak up more wort, don't keep as well and use more space in the freezer.